Furniture items used for seating commonly comprise a support structure covered by upholstery and/or cushioning. In particular, sofas typically comprise a seat base, a back rest and at least one arm rest. A common aesthetic and practical design consideration is assembling the sofa to minimize the visible gaps between the subcomponents. Typically, the furniture item is fully assembled at the factory to insure the individual subcomponents are properly assembled and upholstered to minimize the appearance of visible gaps in the assembled furniture item.
The inherent drawback of assembling the furniture item at the factory is that the shape of the assembled furniture item typically prevents efficient packing of the furniture items for transport. Depending on the shape and size of the furniture item, the packing of the furniture item can result in a significant amount of dead space within the shipping container or truck. In addition to increasing the cost of transportation, the dead space can allow the furniture items to shift during transport resulting in safety risks or damage to the furniture item. Similarly, assembled furniture items can be awkwardly shaped and difficult to navigate into the home or other structure without significant positioning and reorienting of the furniture item. The awkward maneuvering and positioning of the furniture item required to move the furniture item into the structure can result in injury to the movers and/or damage to the furniture or the structure.
An approach to addressing the drawbacks of factory assembled furniture items comprises providing individually upholstered subcomponents as a ready to assemble (“RTA”) furniture kit. The individual components can be more efficiently packed and allows the furniture item to be assembled in situ eliminating the need for navigating the furniture item through the building. However, the inherent challenge of providing RTA furniture kits is that the consumers who assemble the furniture kits are typically untrained and may not have ready access to the tools necessary to assemble the subcomponents. In addition, aligning the heavy subcomponents to install the fasteners for connecting the subcomponents can be difficult, particularly if a single individual is assembling the furniture item. If the fasteners are not properly installed the structural integrity of the furniture item could be compromised resulting in collapse and/or injury of users.
As such, there is a need for a means of providing furniture items that does not suffer from the drawbacks of factory assembled furniture and currently available RTA furniture kits.